Month: September 2010

the crank-wanker at the bus stop who repeatedly asked for change, and didn’t understand when i explained i’ll have nothing to do with his campaign slogans. then he stared at me and stared at me and said “who are you?” and smelled my undercover, and luckily the 20 arrived exactly then.

pamphleteers with their prophets, ornery white and usually dead and likely unable to speak the important follow up question: “Can’t you take a joke?” she cornered me on burnside with her fat stack and drowned expression and little dog occupying a baby stroller and announced her own salvation. hidden gills tickled and i scratched while her lips cast calculations so i slithered before her math found my matrix.

merry wanderers who notice the stars in my eyes and the eyes all over my body, iris to iris with other eye-pods accurately detecting the skipping spinning of my soft insides. we greet in clicks and shake mitts and post walk-away the hooks remain.

still: most are not on to me.

television is very important here

when the hovering ships the US government assures have never been identified arrive, many will be glued to their televisions waiting for someone on the other side of the mystical talking box to confirm the testimony of their senses.

while the nail biting meat is sufficiently occupied, those who have electrostimulated their unmentionables will assume the lotus position and levitate for entry. don’t worry: the few witnesses will likely be written off by uncolorfuls as white-light purple-shroud finger-twirl-by-the-temple acid-popping sky-is-falling psychonauts, or rambling hyperactive unmedicated children in need of a time-out and an older, more glasses-wearing therapist. In the morning those uncolorfuls code crazy will simply be gone. Poof.

television is very important.

day jobs occupy time

this joke is at least as good as the one that begins with a prophet and some pamphlets. after taking out fake money from fake government to go to real school to memorize faulty theories, individuals work meaningless jobs they attended college to avoid to make barely enough fake money to return to the fake government. because they owe them.

captured: a reflection in a pool of water. only the water is real. i tell them. they don’t believe me.

so i tell them it’s television, and if what they’re watching is dull they can turn it off. they say, “what else would I do with my time?” I’m not sure how to answer this.

television is very important.

sound is a strange thing

some humans restrict the experience to ears and fail to activate the sensors sleeping in exposed hair follicles. a cello isn’t simply drunk in a eardrum, it runs a track up arms and over skull and wraps string tight around throat until eyes water mercy. voice isn’t simply a means of message delivery, it’s the creation of a heart egg perfect and warm before slow hatching. each individual accent scaling jagged cliff sides and rolling down green hills and coyote hopping fences and dumping tea in harbors and dipping into great lakes and crawling off pan handles eating hotcakes and collared greens. every cracking knee and whispered judgment and falling down laugh presses me closer to overwhelmed, tips the scales a single weight further into wow.

when my own voice hunts for sound escape, words chosen so each syllable enunciated matters, it’s then i notice how few spend time on the business of listening. No, not until they’re aware of some absence, only longing activates neglected drums and the instruments that accompany them, and only then do they open a little for the greater a-ha.

they’ll never hear us coming.

crows continue to be a nuisance

closest to angels are crows, the closest to flying humans are pigeons. mating of these two beings produces a dumb crow, wandering into the road head bobbing to earth pulse. stand by for the coming 18 wheeler. a fellow other-thing asks if that’s what i am under this exoskeleton – a dumb crow. Gabriel assures me there’s a compliment in there.

two on the wire, waiting. mated for life, nearly toppling the upper branches of a nearby tree with the volume of their night time roost.

they definitely are on to me. good thing no one is listening.

americans like to burn books

words are sacred, pressed into the offerings of trees and preserved for some period of time before they are boiled down to catch phrases and pressed into pamphlets. humans show disdain for one another by burning their favorite books and melting words away. these humans don’t know the internet exists and the books they are burning have already been scanned and are being actively distributed for free, as we speak, by THE GOOGLE. some are very upset by this development. now they’ll never burn all the copies. it’s book immortality, until the internets fail us, and free knowledge until a student loan is required for access.

other ways to know immortality

across the street from the bus stop a black woman wearing house shoes and a long flowing skirt and a pink sweatshirt walks a slow procession on the sidewalk, cradling a life-sized doll dressed as a bride on her big day. each step fluid and perfect, dedicated transient approaches with extended hand to inquire about contribution. the doll, not the woman, turns into the outstretched paw and offers the soliciting an answer.

this is better than television.

my ears tell me to turn up the sound. she has opted for immortality, to color pamphlets conjured around book-fed bonfires by those too afraid to say her name seven times in a pool of water.

i listen, and the doll tells me it’s love of death informing every waking action executed with an eye on the end. informing disrespect for the ocean, a need to hasten the apocalypse so all standing around can see the spectacle. not enough to color it black with oil, why not drip it in blue paint so children wander our terrified and Avatar dyed? why not speed our evolution with skin burnt red and eyes stone flat?

she keeps walking, on to something and way beyond me. and i remember: nothing carries sound like water.

Do humans turn crow as purgatory, trapped observing the living with their kind-of-a-funny-stories and toddlers tied to harnesses and watch-checking clip-cloppers stomping concrete carpets rolled out to welcome rigamortis? Do crows bring death? DEATH, not scare-the-shit-out-of-movie-goers Tarot Death, where the card is played heavy-rings slow and the actress screams her curlers free before bolting from a candle-farm table glittered with moons and stars to meet piano-to-head closed-casket FIN. Not even real Tarot Death, where the hummus is surprise expired, or a cell phone falls into toilet and spares a happy unemployed the salty sulk of job offer.

And, okay this had better not be the Big Done, I’ve only just stitched the golden eagle to my crest, I’ve only now unrolled my scroll beyond the first few lines to reveal the big a-ha. You creepy trash collectors burdening my bins, what are you waiting for? What are you ready for? What do you know?

Caw.

Will their stink of death render me gothy, prisoner of cliché adolescent silken moon POEtry, liquid black eyeliner streaking white-washed sun starved cheeks, costume coffin bookshelf dark magicians Latin names red and gold print jackets internal juke box Death in June black metal Jay-Z? Different just like everybody else, symbol to the air Ra-Ra, subversive just like everybody else (as above, so below) I’m a pirate I’m a fairy I’m a witch I’m a Tim Burton movie I’m a fucking black stain at the picnic. Look how well we all match at the funeral, parasol stars with corsets clamped. Not a spot of dust on the top hat.

They’re waiting for you, Crows, in the graveyard, by the angel statue that sometimes weeps. They’re waiting for both Thought and Memory. Come as a set, come as you are.

CAW.

Well dammit, shit, for God’s sake, can I still read Rumi with your feathers in my face? Do crows fancy dervishes, whirling God intoxicated holy holy on earthbound playgrounds? Do they fancy Freyja flickers like me, twirling hair feet in air, Loki robbed and revenge plotting, deeper in the well for better sword crafting? Do black eyes seek amber mine as you peak through the blinds, do your feathers want my fingers, have your claws pre-drawn portraits? How did you find me? Did Odin send you? Tell me: how did you find me?

Caw.

They follow me and my bike five miles over the river.

Caw.

They sit on the wire while I wait for the bus, listening to an elderly man with a handlebar moustache (I name him Frank as all old men are Frank) tell stories about Belize and Coast-a-Ree-Kah to an Asian man half-listening between iphone glances. Frank sips coffee from an uncovered mug, like he walked out of the kitchen knowing his status as World’s Greatest Dad needed announcing exactly today. Ha ha ha, sip, ha ha ha. Crows?

Eyes closed (hear first, look later, it would be too much). Ghosts, nursery rhymes trapped in sidewalk cracks, spirits hobgoblining life from the nearly-living, prism locked reflections two dimensioned in humid air, at once alert to open. Yes. I can hear you.

Holy wow how’s it going she can hear did you notice she could too rah loo skippity skip skip hey she never loved me get me out of hello hi are you still listening ha ha hooray good to –

Caw.

This is not the stuff of bus stops. I should be nude for this amniotic slip and slide, this running up the rabbit hole. Bus arrives my eyes dart to wire, amber to black, black to amber.

We will follow you. Twenty pairs of two, each two speaking as one. Caw.

At the top of the hill we’ll be waiting. Whisper when you ask of crows. Remember to whisper.

If there’s one thing Uncle Bill taught us, it’s to never number pages.

a shrinking device and a shirt pocket will make me warmer. so many hearts undocumented, unheard by my alien recording devices ever hunting for a human who purrs. .

Orange striped cat lying dead in the road, a ring of bowed heads willing life back into limp unrolled tongue. Woman in a doorway grateful it wasn’t her dog, waiting on the lawsuit. Pick up the cat Amanda, pick it up. This is important. You’ll remember this. Instead I keep staring. Some wonder crone finally stops and doesn’t blink just scoops and carries cat to a more peaceful traffic-free aria though it’s already ended.

This memory strong in my mind biking home I slam on the brakes at the site of flattened crow and peal body from the road for tree lawn decomposing while the dead’s friends look on, remembering.

We might not be dead at 30 like the pilgrims but we might as well be, sitting in our living rooms bitching between hotdog bites and commercial breaks about politicians and their decision making before returning to our regularly scheduled nothing-better-to-do, laughing at Asian teenagers falling off flotation devices into blue-dyed swimming pools while wearing helmets and throwing up both thumbs to an army of white-man cameras.

It’s to convince the most serial killer self that underneath the bullshit core there’s a miner 49 just waiting to strap on a hat and suit and stumble into the mine even before the canary’s come back.

hand on thigh circles a birthmark threatening my theory of being spawned while the sun sets fast and I worry of winter. me pretending to look at passersby with their tiny white socks and duck shoes and khaki shorts while thinking about your hand, full poetry on display protruding veins I want to strum. eyes slide to the left and craft your profile onto my coin, hammered hard by life’s frustration but still sneaky enough to smirk. knuckle in mouth channels fake concentration while half-closed lids plot plans for my own hand that could end in arrest if I’m not careful. I adjust my leg to accommodate other parts of you imagined traveling softest hidden skin, drinking deep every finger curve crease line fingertip sun scorched wrist, and it’s the wrist where the rings of my own fingers click and coax your hand a naked inch higher.

In Portland things in a pink box are always donuts.

and someone is yelling at me through the phone about how you should be married by now with all this love in your face you ingrate, and I say which face on what head? and he says all of them and I hadn’t considered that.

you don’t notice how my prehistoric hands sculpt a keyboard or how important cuddle dissolve is to my ever-wrestled wrangling.

No: I’m a one-eyed liar blind to my thousand tricks trapping bodies in barbed wire until even intestines entangle. Even my open is pin from grenade. My only recipe blows up the room.

The house will never be clean unless we can afford a maid service, and we’ll only eat when we both remember to (not often), and we’ll both pull away just when we achieve perfect closeness and you’ll accuse me of getting the wrong cat food on purpose and I’ll say you know that’s a sore spot of mine. I’ll get lost in the bathroom mirror and you’ll wonder what’s taking so fucking long, and I’ll say I’ve finally pinpointed the location of my superior self and I’m negotiating her release. This used to be the sort of thing to intrigue you but now you’re yelling about us having tickets for something, can’t even remember what but they were a give away and I shout that I’ve nearly talked her down, she’s smiling from the other side, so serene about something I don’t understand but she’s whispering directions. Just one sharp left and then two right turns, knock-twice-pause-knock, and when I arrive I’ll be naked and every inch of me will be slippery.